twenty-four persons, out of whom he would choose twelve, who alone should have a right to print such books as should be approved and considered necessary, and not new compositions.

Such was the origin of the royal printing establishment. Dulaure, in his History of Paris, places this institution in the reign of Louis XIII. According to him, France owes it to Cardinal Richelieu. It is true, it did not flourish until under Louis XIII., when it was established in the galleries of the Louvre; but I think Francis the First's edict of the 23d of February, 1539, may be considered as the foundation of it.

In 1642, Sublet, Sieur des Noyes, was made superintendent of the royal printing establishment; Trichet Dufrêne, corrector of the types, and Cramoisi, printer. During the space of two years, seventy large volumes, Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, were issued, and the expenses amounted to more than 300,000 francs, from 1642 to 1649.

From that time until 1789, the art of printing barely satisfied the wants created by its invention, especially towards the latter part of the time which preceded the remarkable epoch of popular emancipation.

In spite of despotism, it laboured without cessation, lending its aid to the fury and violence of all parties; and the nearer the crisis approached, the more force and activity did it display.

MONG the highly valuable discoveries, we must place that of steam, for by its means distance is annihilated, trade rendered prosperous, human labour saved, and a new importance given to the country. It is a curious matter to follow the progress of this discovery, which is, in a great measure, due to the children of our beautiful France. Anthemius, an architect and engineer, under the Emperor Justinian, mentioned by Agathias, in his history, book iv., having lost a law-suit against his neighbour Tenon, resolved upon a singular species of revenge. He filled several large vessels with water, and closed them very tight: several pipes were attached to the covers, which decreased in size as they reached upwards. Fire being placed underneath, the steam escaped through the pipes in the covers, and not finding a free vent above, shook the ceiling and the rafters of his own house, and that of Tenon, to such a degree, that the latter left it from fright.

The power of steam was then known at that time; but the application of it, for want of means, was never directed to useful purposes. Nevertheless, in an article of M. Arago, in the Annuaire des Bureaux des Longitudes, for the year 1829, we read that, one hundred and twenty years before Christ, Hero, of Alexandria, called the Old, invented an apparatus presenting

the first application ever made of steam.

It bore the name of

spiritalia seu pneumatica, and is called a reaction machine. Under the reign of Louis XIII., a man conceived the project of making use of steam, as a motive power, on an extended scale; but his genius experienced an oppression of a terrible nature. If Cardinal Richeliue is mentioned in history as a capable minister, we must not yet forget that there were many victims to his pride and obstinacy, whose sufferings have tarnished his reputation for skill, and shed a bloody halo round his head.

The following is a letter addressed by Marion Delorme to Cinq Mars, the young man who entertained the silly project of overturning the cardinal minister:

MY DEAR D'EFFIAT:-Whilst you are forgetting me, at Marbonne, absorbed in the pleasures of the court, and of opposing M. le Cardinal, I, according to your expressed wishes, am doing the honours of Paris to your English lord, the Marquis of Worcester. I take him about, or, rather, he takes me about, from one curiosity to another. Choosing always the most sad and serious, speaking but few words, listening with great attention, and fixing his large blue eyes upon every one of whom he asks a question, as if he could see into the depths of their souls. He is never satisfied with the explanations he receives, and does not look upon things exactly as they are shown to him. For instance, when we visited the Bicêtre, he pretended to see marks. of great genius in a crazy man, whom, if he were not raving, I am sure your Englishman would have taken to London, if possible, and listened to his nonsense from morning till night. As we crossed the yard filled with these creatures, I was half-dead with fright, and leaned against my companion. Suddenly an ugly face appeared behind the bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed:

"I am not crazy. I have made a discovery which will enrich the country that so violently opposes it."

"What is his discovery?" I asked of the man who showed us over the place.

"Ah!" exclaimed he, shrugging his shoulders, "something very simple, which you would never guess: it is the use of steam.” I burst out laughing.

"His name," continued the keeper, "is Solomon de Caus. He came from Normandy, four years ago, to present a memoir to the king, on the subject of the marvellous effects to be obtained by his invention: according to him, machinery could be moved by it, carriages propelled, and numerous other wonders produced. . . . The cardinal sent away the fool without listening to him. But De Caus, undiscouraged, followed him from place to place; so that Richelieu, tired of him, had him shut up

in the Bicêtre, where he has now been three years and a half, and where he tells every stranger, as he did you, that he is not crazy, but that he has made a great discovery. He has even written a book on the subject."

And he handed us a book. Milord Worcester took it, and after reading some pages, said,

"This man is by no means crazy; and in my country, instead of shutting him up, we would have made his fortune. Bring him here: I wish to question him."

He returned from this conversation with a sad countenance. "He is indeed crazy now," said he, "misfortune and captivity have destroyed his reason for ever; you have made him crazy; but when you put him in this dungeon, you placed there the greatest genius of your time."

Hereupon we took our leave, and since then he can only talk of Solomon de Caus. Adieu, my dear and faithful Henry; come back soon, and in the mean time be not too happy there, to pre serve a little love for me.

MARION DELORME.

The book shown by the keeper to the Marquis of Worcester, was, no doubt, that published by the unhappy Solomon de Caus, in 1613, by the title of Considerations of Motive Forces with various useful Machines.

The idea of raising water by means of the elastic force of steam, belongs then to Solomon de Caus. Forty-eight years later, the Marquis of Worcester endeavoured to appropriate it to himself.

Side by side with the name of De Caus, stands that of Papin, the first who constructed a machine in which steam, under a high pressure, raised itself into the air after producing the desired effect. The atmospheric machine of the Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, with the exception of a few trifling particulars, is precisely the same.